PowerSchool is a Internet-based platform where educators can store student information, according to its website — including academic performance, class schedule, demographics, behavior and health. Launched in 1997, the program serves more than 45 million students in 15,000 schools across 90 countries.
The student information platform — used by dozens of local school districts — experienced a cyber attack Dec. 28 through one of its customer portals, PowerSource, according to a company statement obtained by TribLive.
"PowerSchool is not experiencing, nor does it expect to experience, any operational disruption and continues to provide services as normal to our customers," the statement reads. "We have no evidence that other PowerSchool products were affected as a result of this incident."
Some students' personally identifiable information, including social security numbers and medical information, was affected in the breach, a PowerSchool spokesperson said. The company is working to determine which individuals were affected.
Penn-Trafford and Franklin Regional school districts were notified of the breach last week, sending letters to parents Friday noting student and parent names and addresses might be among the impacted data.
Neither district stores students' social security numbers on PowerSchool. Franklin Regional Superintendent Gennaro Piraino said the district does not believe any student medical information was accessed.
Fox Chapel Area School District sent a letter to parents Thursday about the breach. Either the district or PowerSchool will contact families if their information was impacted.
"The Fox Chapel Area School District is extremely disappointed that PowerSchool experienced this unfortunate incident," Superintendent Mary Catherine Reljac said in a statement. "Although this happened within the PowerSchool infrastructure, the district is reviewing its own records independently and will continue to take privacy and data security very seriously."
Though Mt. Pleasant Area School District uses PowerSchool, the company told the school none of its students were impacted by the breach, according to a statement published on the district website Saturday.
The breach "only affected Powerschool SIS (Student Information System) customers who they host in their cloud services," the statement said. Mt. Pleasant Area uses a separate student information system called eSchool Plus, which is hosted on local servers, the statement said.
Ligonier Valley, Derry Area, Yough, Monessen, Highlands, Mt. Lebanon and Canon-McMillan are among the other school districts in the region who list using PowerSchool on their websites.
PowerSchool's cybersecurity response team is working with third-party cybersecurity experts to resolve the situation. The company declined to share how many schools were affected by the breach and an estimate on when the issue will be resolved.
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